Tyrant
by TehPenguinQueen
Summary: Shep Lambrick has nearly run out of ideas for taming his son's baser instincts. The future of the Lambrick Foundation, and of the family itself, may well depend on his latest effort working. Unfortunately, calling it a long shot would be an understatement. (Language, Violence, Sexual Content, Alcohol, Drugs, SO MANY TRIGGERS)
1. Prologue: The Countdown

Six Years Ago

"I want you to be strong for me. Can you do that?" Her voice was heavy with sleep, her throat raw from stomach acid.

He said nothing, only nodded as his lips pressed together, rolling inward as his eyes began to grow red.

"I know you can," her hand, soft as ever but cold, thin, came out of the blankets and reached for his own. She brought it to her gently cracked lips and sighed against his knuckles. "Oh, Julian," a smile spread over her haunted face, "I only wish I could see for myself the man you'll become."

"I'll make you proud, Mom," he whispered as he leaned forward, running his free hand over her forehead, "I promise."

"I know you will, my little prince," she said, leaning into the pillows, "Shep?"

Julian took a step back from her and let his father, whose normally rakish face was dark and stony, take his place half-kneeling at her side.

"Oh, Lily," the man said, shaking his head and holding her hand in both of his.

"Shep, darling," she said with an adoring gaze, and she opened her mouth again as if to say something else. Then it seemed she thought better of it, closing it again and regaining that serene countenance, that soft and even somewhat sad smile that had always graced her features, in sickness and in health.

"I love you both, very much. My boys," she said as her eyelids closed. She took a deep breath in, then sighed gently.

Julian came to her side as she inhaled once more. Tears from the young man's cheekbones dripped onto her forehead as she took another breath in. His lips touched the pale, pale skin as her last breath left her body; the sound was a strange, ghostly rattle that made even her husband, a widower now, shiver in spite of all the things he had seen.

Five Years Ago

"Good afternoon, Detective."

"Good afternoon, Mr. Lambrick."

"Please, have a seat. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I prefer to stand," said the woman as she stepped into Shepherd's home office.

"Suit yourself," said the man, his voice jovial, "Can I offer you a drink?"

"I don't intend to stay long," she said, less politely even than her last refusal.

She was young. New. Full of fire. It dripped out of the pores on her temples, entered the air on her breath. She was not the first green officer to darken the door of the family's primary residence during Shep's reign as patriarch, and she likely would not be the last.

"Perhaps you should state your business, then."

"I've come to talk to you about your son."

"Julian?" his head tilted, and he laughed a little, "Now, listen, he and his friends might find their way into a parent's liquor cabinet from time to time, but what teenager hasn't?"

"...While that is still illegal, Mr. Lambrick, that isn't why I'm here."

He merely kept his head tilted, his eyebrows raising.

"Mr. Lambrick are you aware that your son is stalking a fourteen-year-old girl?"

At that, he let out a laugh so robust it knocked her off her guard.

"Mr. Lambrick?"

"Fifteen!" he chuckled, "Miss Black is fifteen."

"...So you're aware of his behavior toward her?"

"Well, that's one way to put that they're dating."

"Dating?"

"Yes! They just went out for her birthday. Sushi. Julian's never been fond of it, but she begged him."

"Mr. Lambrick, Adelaide Black's friends showed me some of the notes he had been leaving in her locker over the past few months..."

"I appreciate your concern," he held up his hand, "But my son is an eighteen year-old boy. His little love letters to Addy reflect that. I can assure you, I have a careful eye on them both. My son's been...a little troubled...since he lost his mother. It's been a hard year for us both. Addy's quite the bright spot. However foreword his letters may be, I can tell you he does care for the girl."

"I'm sorry you don't take this seriously," the detective crossed her arms, "The next time we see each other, it will be after I've had a talk with my ADA."

Shep snorted, "And good luck with that."

She shook her head, setting her jaw in disbelief, "Mr. Lambrick, when he sees these notes, I'm not going to be the one in need of luck."

"Detective," said the man, reaching his hand into a small dish of sunflower seeds on his desk, "When he sees who you intend to prosecute, you most certainly will be."

Four Years Ago

It was an August night, outside on a back terrace, when she finally said it to him. They had been together nine months, and she had spent most of the summer in the Hamptons with him, his father, and the core of their staff. She was preparing for another year of high school, while he was on the verge of his first semester at his father's alma mater, the same Ivy League institution that had educated Lambricks since its inception before the colonies were even a country of their own.

"Julian, I..." she swallowed a lump in her throat, "I want to take the bracelet off."

It was a beautiful bracelet, sterling silver with a cut-out monogram in the shape of an elongated diamond, written in interlocking script. Most girls got them with their own initials, but this one had been made with a J, an L, and an A, for Julian Alistair Lambrick. He had given it to her that previous Christmas, with strict instructions that she never remove it, and she hadn't.

The very idea that she could want such a thing hurt him terribly, but he hid it well.

"Why?"

"I just..." she removed it, holding it out to him, "You're going to be in college in a few weeks, and I...I just don't know if I can do this."

"...What do you mean?" his tone darkened.

"You've known your whole life who you're going to be, and what you're going to do. I wasn't raised like that. My parents have money, sure, but not like yours. At the end of the day, they still work for the state, and I'm a half-scholarship student..."

"...Which I've told you again and again doesn't make any difference."

"I'm not...I'm not from your world, Julian. And I don't know if I want to spend the rest of my life in it, and I don't think it's fair to ask me to be sure when I'm not even sixteen."

"But I'm sure."

"It doesn't work like that," she shook her head, "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't want to tell you like this, but I couldn't hold it in," she stood, "I think...I think you should be single when you start college."

"You're breaking up with me?" he looked up at her, his face a mixture of disgust and disbelief.

"I'm so sorry," she whimpered, clasping a hand over her mouth as she turned and ran for the house.

He stood up, looking after her with his jaw open. When the shock wore off, he yelled, "Well, fine! Break up with me! Just...Go ahead!"

It wasn't articulate, or even effective. But it was better, he thought, than stunned silence.

Eighteen Months Ago

"What you did last night was unacceptable!"

True rage, for Shep, was as rare as true melancholy. And yet he was seething at his son.

"I don't get why you're so pissed."

"Don't get why I...well, for starters, you were drunker than a suicidal sailor!"

"And?" It was clear the words meant nothing to the young man.

"And that is no way to conduct yourself. I know you're still young, Julian, but at an official function of the Foundation..."

"I'm sorry," Julian said with his lip curled, "I thought it was a dinner party."

"God damn it, Julian," Shep groaned, slumping into his chair.

"It's not like she even survived," Julian said, laughing a little, "I mean, did you see her face when she realized there was poison in the mousse? She was a pig! And a pig who should've just shut up and eaten her dog food."

"Everyone in the Game is chosen because they have a shot at winning," his father said, taking a sip of scotch, "What would you have done if she had won?"

"As if she would tell someone," he rolled his eyes, "Yes, officer, I just shot a stranger and stabbed several others, but please listen while I tell you about how a Lambrick raped my worthless crack whore fuckh..."

"Julian!" the man cut him off, "Enough! Last night you spit on nearly four centuries of carefully-held tradition! You destroyed the integrity of the Game, and worse, with someone worth less than your own shit."

"Fine, I won't do it again," Julian stood, "Can I go now?"

"You can go," Shep waved his hand "But you won't be hosting any more parties with your friends until I decide otherwise."

"Oh, sure, Dad," he said as he turned, dragging himself with needless drama out of the room, "Take away the one time I can have fun. That'll keep me from trying to sneak some in..."

Six Months Ago

"Well," said Shep as he slipped into Julian's room, "Iris won."

Julian made a sound like an exasperated toddler and whined, "I don't caaaare."

"You should," he said, striding to a chair and having a seat, "She's a friend of the family now. The people who prove themselves worthy of our help have proven their potential. We owe it to them to remain invested in their lives."

"She shouldn't even be alive," he threw the blankets off of his leg, revealing his already bloody dressing, "She attacked me."

"Julian. Everyone invited to the Game has the potential to win. You can't just do whatever you like with them. And besides, it compromises..."

"...The integrity of the Game, I know, I fucking know," he flung the blankets back over his thigh.

"Besides, Bevans said she barely got it in an inch. Fortunately more that you managed."

"Oh, ha, ha."

"I'm serious, Julian. You're a Lambrick. She hadn't even begun to prove herself yet. Up until then, she'd been a sanctimonious disappointment. We always called you our Prince, Julian. It wasn't an exaggeration. What your mother would say, if she knew you were treating yourself with so little reverence."

"Don't talk about Mom!" he sat bolt upright, wincing and grabbing at his injury, "SHE wouldn't blame me for this. She would know what to do! She always knew what to do!"

"You're right," Shep sighed, standing and coming over, "She always had the answer. She could read people better than they could read themselves."

Julian rolled over, curling up in as much of a ball as he could manage, "I miss her."

"I know you do, my boy," Shep placed his hand on the young man's shoulder.

"No you don't," he said, the shoulder twitching.

"Maybe I don't," the older man sighed again, taking his hand away, "I'll come get you up when it's time to fly out."

"Whatever."

Outside the room, Shep took off his watch. The timepiece was worse for wear, and a little out of style, but all that mattered to him was the engraving on the back, a dedication from his late wife, and the date of their wedding.

"Oh, Lily," he shook his head, "You really would know what to do, wouldn't you?"


	2. Chapter 1 - Ace in the Hole

The Lambrick household ran with only a handful of staff, considering the size of the estate. Two men used only a handful of rooms, and Shep, at least, was fairly tidy; the majority of the house required only a monthly dusting, and as such, the housekeeper came only once a week. Full-time, there was a gardener and groundskeeper, a groom who looked after the dogs and horses, and a driver who maintained the cars. Bevans arranged for any outside services that needed to be contracted, and cooked at least once a day. He was an accomplished butler, skills he learned serving and protecting the royal household before he was demoted to interrogator. All four hired men were deadly unarmed, and always within reach of a firearm...a bachelor and a widower hardly needed anything else.

All six of them were outside on that particularly mild June day. Mark, the groom, was helping Nick, the groundskeeper, replace the peonies in the urns that dotted the hedge maze with roses. Bevans, who had a peculiar tenderness about the kitchen garden, was picking vegetables, and Winston, the driver and the oldest of the staff, was cleaning out the dovecote, having lost a poker game the night before.

Unhappy about having a stranger in their house, the doves were out on the lawn, some of them gathered around a bench near the maze's entrance. Shep was sitting there in the shade, eating sunflower seeds out of a small pouch and tossing every other one onto the grass for the birds. His son was nearby, hands in his pockets, pacing along the path into the hedges. He whistled tunelessly, looking up at the sky to distract himself from the urge to toss a pebble at the cooing flock and watch them scatter.

"Julian, are you paying attention?"

He stopped pacing and turned his eyes to his father, "Not really."

"Damn it, Julian," the man began, but his son cut him off with a snotty little laugh.

"Relax, Dad. I'm listening."

"Don't do that," Shep said, shifting his legs foreword, "Anyway, I just don't know what to think. I'm beyond thrilled, if a little bewildered, that you've decided to pursue your MBA without even the slightest prompting on my part, but..."

"Always a 'but,'" Julian muttered.

"Look," his father sighed, "I know I've had you on a short leash since the last Game."

"You don't say."

"I just want you to understand the mistake you made. Again."

"I got stabbed in the thigh, Dad," Julian stopped pacing and crossed his arms, "I think I learned my lesson."

"And I learned mine," said the older man, "I want to apologize for forgetting what it was like to be a young man. I was almost as headstrong as you when I was your age, and at least as wild."

All Julian could do was blink. His father hadn't apologized to anyone, at least not seriously, since his mother had been alive.

And speaking of which, "That said, when I met your mother, I did mature. She tamed me in a way no one else could...and now that you're moving on to graduate school, I think it's time you, too, think about settling down."

"I have zero interest in the pack of Kappa Theta Fuckits that follow my friends and I around," Julian's lip curled, "Regardless of who their fathers are."

"I know, and I also apologize for not realizing that sooner. Your mother was a brilliant woman...of course you deserve the same."

A moment of silence passed between them.

"Fortunately," Shep went on, "I think I've found the solution to at least part of this little conundrum."

"Which is...?"

"Well," he smiled, pleased with himself, "First, I think you should tell Bevans that you'll be eating lunch in your room. And then, I think you should go upstairs."

Julian rolled his eyes, turning and walking off like a child condemned to bed, "Fiiiiiine. I don't know why you always have to be so cryptic."

When the boy was out of earshot, his father dumped the rest of his seed pouch on the ground, causing the doves to rush in around him. "I hope this works, girls," he said, standing to stuff the empty bag in his pocket, "I don't think I have any more ideas."

Julian cut through Bevans' garden and entered the house by the kitchen door. The bald man was rinsing his newly-picked artichokes, a pot on the stove warming water for steaming.

"What's for lunch?"

"Artichokes with a light tomato dipping sauce...and pesto portobello mushroom steaks," he said with a polite smile as he shook the excess water from a vegetable.

"That's right, it's Monday," Julian sighed as he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Voss, "I don't know why Dad lets you do that stupid Meatless Monday thing."

"Oy," he turned his head to the young man, "Your father is a powerful man. But even he knows not to get in the way of a Brit's devotion to Sir Paul."

"If Paul McCartney told you to cut off your finger, would you do it?" Julian asked, with a genuine, if sick, curiosity.

"Without hesitation," Bevans said, moving on to the next artichoke.

"Remind me to get his number," Julian sneered, striding out of the kitchen, "I'm eating in my room!"

"Don't expect it to be hot, then!" the butler called after him, laughing a little as he shook his head. He knew what was coming, of course. He had been integral in its orchestration.

Julian climbed a back staircase without his hand on the rail, whistling to himself as he did so. His rooms were off of the third floor and nestled under a peak in the roof that, from the outside, looked rather like a turret. The sitting room sat at the base of another small staircase, which led to his bedroom. It was befitting an American prince, and one with no small amount of blood from past European dynasties, to be quartered as if in a castle.

Nothing in his sitting room looked even the least bit out of place. Whatever his father had sent him upstairs to notice, it wasn't there. He sighed to himself again, setting his water down, sans coaster, of course, on some 16th century German thing he used as a side table.

"Could've at least told me what to look for," he muttered as he climbed to his bedroom.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he stopped dead. Then, as suddenly as he had frozen, he crossed to the window, pulling back the curtains and drawing up the shades to let in enough light that he could clearly see. Then he walked back over to it, about four feet in front of his bed.

The smirk that curled over his alabaster face was positively wicked. It reached his pale eyes, twisted them in sick glee as he began to circle his father's little surprise.

"And it isn't even my birthday," he said to himself.

The cage was perhaps five and a half feet long by two feet wide, coal black and tall enough for a person to sit on all fours. The bars were thick and cold, and the lid was held against escape attempts by three metal bolts, all of which had the ability to be locked, though it was hardly necessary. Its floor was lightly padded with tufted leather, also black, and a black velvet blanket had been provided for the comfort of its occupant, though Julian bent down almost immediately and pulled it off of the body within.

Adelaide shifted in her sleep, but didn't wake. She wore a thin, black silk slip, nothing else, and her body curled up instinctively against the sudden chill.

She was nineteen, now, and looked almost exactly as he remembered. Her face had matured, her cheekbones standing out a bit more than they had. And she had certainly filled out a bit more since the last time he had seen her. She was still slight as ever, all delicate bones and classical prettiness, with long, blonde hair that was nearly white naturally, and still as fine as a four-year-old's, somehow. Her eyes were closed, but he couldn't imagine they were less big and less blue than he recalled.

Her forehead was high, her nose a little bit aquiline, her lips pink and her mouth on the small side. Her skin was almost ghostly against the black silk and leather; he was used to seeing her in black, or he had been. She'd been a bit of a Goth in high school, always sneaking evidence of it past the deputy headmasters put in charge of the dress code. Even in her sleep, her head bent faintly toward her right shoulder as it had whenever she was listening to someone speak.

Yes, she had filled out a bit, but her breasts were still hardly a handful, and her ass, though he could only see half of it, was still downright adorable. His mouth was watering; he was sure she still bruised just as easily as before, and couldn't wait to find out.

He went over to his dresser and rifled through an array of awful things before he settled on an antique Italian stiletto with a twisted wood hilt. He was already half-hard when he went back to the cage and dragged the knife along one of the bars, where it made a scraping noise that could've woken the dead.

Yes, her eyes were still wide, round and ocean blue. Her teeth were still white, her hands still tiny as they wrapped around the bars, her fingernails little almond slivers he was surprised to see were painted pale pink rather than her usual blood burgundy. And her voice was still soft as ever, though just a bit deeper, a bit warmer, as she asked sleepily, "Julian?"

"Well, look who it is," he smirked, stepping back to lean against his bed.

She looked around quickly, beginning to stammer, "Oh, no. I'm so sorry. There has to be some mistake. Is your father around? This wasn't what we'd discussed when he..."

Julian clicked his tongue three times, "Oh, I don't think there's been any mistake at all."

"But then...I...Oh, God."

He snickered darkly, "Hope you had a nice nap, little pig," he lowered himself into a squat, face almost level with hers as he spoke, like a parent explaining something to a child, "It's time to play."


End file.
